Harry Wood

Software engineer somewhat specialised towards ruby on rails and towards back-end data work. Open data & open collaborations. Father of two.
https://harrywood.co.uk/

Last Notes

2026-10-03 11:09:34 UTC

Today's OpenStreetMap #31DayOSMChallenge is FIXME tags.
I've tended to ignore these. There's a lot of FIXME tags in London. It's a bit of a mess! See them with OSMInspector here:
https://tools.geofabrik.de/osmi/?view=tagging&lon=-0.07747&lat=51.52122&zoom=11&overlays=fixmes_on_nodes%2Cfixmes_on_ways Today's a good day to try to fix some.
https://cdn.masto.host/enosmtown/media_attachments/files/117/376/649/962/930/684/original/e8b582467c9b40df.png

2026-07-23 01:50:07 UTC

Codeberg is set to discourage vibe-coded projects: https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html
That @nprofile…mvm4 blog post gives a good run-down of the familiar ways AI coding is messing up open source, but also the "The development team of none" section is describing a problem more specific to code hosting:
"It seems ridiculous to see projects with a single developer and virtually no users consuming as much or even more resources than some of the largest community projects on Codeberg"

2026-06-24 09:42:49 UTC

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@nprofile…25ct @nprofile…6z8u hmm when you say 48 seconds, d'you literally mean there is a time limit? Seems surprising!
or d'you mean it pops up quite quickly in response to clicking/scrolling on things?
Admittedly I'm normally logged in to facebook, so I'm curious what you see.

2026-06-11 10:17:35 UTC

On chatgpt.com some prompts will cause it to show you a little embedded map. It's OpenStreetMap data via mapbox.
I notice they do not give any on-screen credit to OpenStreetMap or even Mapbox (Not even hidden behind an "i" icon)
It's almost as if they don't respect copyright.
https://cdn.masto.host/enosmtown/media_attachments/files/116/730/897/090/749/710/original/f26fab6e7ae97d31.png

2026-05-11 01:19:34 UTC

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@nprofile…tkx6 I like this article. For some reason it's gone from the original location, but available on medium https://medium.com/westenberg/we-dont-need-more-cynics-we-need-more-builders-56ca41b717f5 @nprofile…42mr

2026-05-01 09:56:01 UTC

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@nprofile…84le @nprofile…50mt Yeah I think that's right. It's the generic chatting magic trick that has everyone so beguiled. So...
"you can totally train a useful base model for task specific fine tuning without stealing"
I'm not so sure. There's quite a lot of content out there labelled public domain/copyright free, but maybe not *enough* to do the beguiling magic trick.
But I agree it would be nice if more people were trying/discussing this, if only to underline the copyright theft of the main players.

2026-01-20 13:30:13 UTC

The stupid things OpenStreetMap ops team have to deal with:
"Some lovely company thought the best way to check if this app is online is to do a very expensive query against OpenStreetMap... every 3 seconds... with hundreds of instances of this app" https://youtu.be/qhie14YKa-w?si=9_jsShC_IeJQFKWP&t=565
Great SOTMEU talk by @nprofile…jqsr
#sotmeu #sotmeu25 #openstreetmap @nprofile…7q3z

2025-12-31 16:18:29 UTC

We've been getting around São Paulo (in all its concrete complexity) using offline OpenStreetMap via @nprofile…ctk3 . Never used it with android auto before. Very nice! #saopaulo
https://cdn.masto.host/enosmtown/media_attachments/files/115/814/940/093/575/117/original/5cc7195d93e3691f.jpg

2025-11-10 22:51:50 UTC

Excellent London #ruby user group this evening: https://ruby.social/@lrug/115526913153973583 Interesting tech topics plus a bit of politics from @nprofile…yfy6 to spice things up a bit.
(Although someone made a good point: if DHH is going to be racist, then that shouldn't be described as "politics". That's talk that shouldn't be tolerated)
https://cdn.masto.host/enosmtown/media_attachments/files/115/527/842/844/101/630/original/7933dc28edcfd896.jpg

2025-06-11 10:33:20 UTC

My brother works in "environmental consulting". A few years ago he took a job in a tech company, that does carbon accounting. So I gave the pessimistic advice:
"It'll be fun for a while. Enjoy it, but be prepared because venture capital funding means it'll most likely fail"
They're announcing the winding down today 😞
But apparently they would've made the next funding round were it not for the decline in customers since Trump. Corporate responsibility towards CO₂ emissions went out of fashion 😖

2025-05-13 11:59:13 UTC

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@nprofile…k2mh @nprofile…2g43 I was looking up what my local MP Jeremy Corbyn has been up to, and came across this: https://socialistworker.co.uk/news/corbyn-almost-declares-new-left-challenge-to-starmer/ Some ideas to "cut through the infinitely fragmented and divided morass of independents". I can't find a website for this PACE organisation though, so early days I suppose.
Of course Corbyn and his pals are probably all a bit too far left to gain wide appeal.

2025-04-04 14:32:43 UTC

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@nprofile…jmrh The area around the station is rather grotty (as it is in so many cities). I stayed there with my family for one night, but I'd probably recommend parking yourself in a cafe/eatery *in* the station, or just outside in Place Victor Horta: https://osm.org/go/0EoScwNkM?m= But it's only modern chain restaurants/cafes, so not a very exciting recommendation I'm afraid.

2024-12-25 14:18:09 UTC

We're normally in West Yorkshire, but this year my parents had a plumbing flood, and so we're renting a Christmas house in Scarborough instead.
https://cdn.masto.host/enosmtown/media_attachments/files/113/713/863/656/633/970/original/e7d77bb97b2b485e.jpg

2024-11-27 10:00:50 UTC

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@nprofile…5sr3 I went to look for the biggest one. ooh yeah. That's a beauty! https://osm.org/go/4zhZEU7H9-

2024-08-29 09:17:31 UTC

When I'm on holiday, instead of just reading a travel guide like a normal person, for some reason I read the WikiVoyage article, and then spend my holiday evenings fixing the WikiVoyage article. https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Montpellier&action=history
https://cdn.masto.host/enosmtown/media_attachments/files/113/044/539/552/863/545/original/54946e7eb86cfd26.png

2024-04-23 13:36:33 UTC

Google's search algorithm used to be a powerful force transforming the web to be more usable, by driving people to put out content the right way. This article explains how these days search results are getting worse, because the web is getting worse, still driven by google's algorithm: https://www.theverge.com/c/23998379/google-search-seo-algorithm-webpage-optimization